I really enjoyed Alma Alexander's The Secrets of Jin-Shei , which was a story set in a fantasy-China where a women's language was spoken and a sacred sisterhood existed. Embers of Heaven is a sequel, set 400 years later, and I expected to enjoy it just as much.
Embers of Heaven seems to exist in a much more China-like fantasy-China than the China of Secrets, although this may be because I'm more familiar with Chinese history in the period that Embers is set. Embers of Heaven has a Mao-like character, Iloh, known as First Citizen Iloh, who writes a Golden Book that citizens carry around with them. There's a Cultural Revolution, a Red Army (called the Golden Wind) who change the names of streets and destroy things that remind them of the old regime - I felt like I was reading Wild Swans with different names.
I find a fantasy novel that simply takes a period of history and change the names of things quite strange. I wonder what the point of it is. Why not just write the same novel and set it in China during the Cultural Revolution? Perhaps the spiritual revival of jin-shei which our main character seeks to create may not have worked - but why not make it an alternative history novel, rather than a fantasy?
It puzzles me, this decision, and it rather spoiled the book for me, because the similarities between this period in fantasy-China and our world's China kept jarring me out of the narrative. It seemed, in a way, that by setting this in a fantasy world, Alexander discounted the fact that this actually occurred in China. I'm not sure why I feel this way, as I don't believe that writing about things in a fantasy setting trivialises them. I think perhaps it comes close when the fantasy world is so similar to our own.
Did anyone out there have a different take on this, or enjoy this book more? How do you feel about fantasy that edges so closely to our own world's history?
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4 comments:
I certainly didn't mean to - trivialise anything, I mean. The reason it reads "more real" than the first book is... because that's what the publishers wanted - they wanted less "magic" in there, but I was writing about an alternate reality and so instead I went for mysticism rather than magic. I tried to write about how real people MIGHT have thought and acted under certain (admittedly familiar) circumstances... it was an interesting thing to try and do, "Evolve" a fictional society, write what is still essentially a fantasy novel, and keep it all coherent. I hope I at least managed to do that much... [wry grin]
Oh yes, Alma - it was certainly coherent, and the alternative society hung together very realistically. And there were certain elements of it that I liked very much - I love the concept of jin-shei, and the network of women throughout Syai. I suppose what I really enjoyed about the first one was the magic, and was a little disappointed that Embers it was less of a "magic" fantasy than Secrets. (This is probably also influenced by my current enthusiasm with high fantasy.)
Please don't take this less than enthusiastic review as an indication of how much I like your writing, because I enjoy it very much - have read all your books, as a matter of fact :-) You're the second author I've had happen across one of my reviews, and I think I need to put a little disclaimer across the top - "Warning - reviews written quickly by someone not gifted at reviewing!"
[grin] yes, I read the Diane Duane encounter... I don't think SHE minded the honesty, and neither do I - actually I think that the honest reviews are the ones by "gifted" reviewers. I do reviews too, for SFSite, and some of mine have been... less than glowing... it stands to reason that people will like different things and as long as they can justify their opinions I have a perfect respect for their right to have reached them. In other words, I'm not MAD or anything. But as for "Embers"... if left to myself it would have gone far more into the magical element. There was more magic in "Jin shei", originally, than eventually ended up in there. I was WRITING a fantasy; the publishers chose to market it as more of a mainstreamy kind of thing, and they demanded that the magic be toned down. I tried to keep a good double handful of it in "Embers" but obviously not enough...
Keep an eye out for my new YA, coming out in the USA end of the year (and probably available in Australia shortly after - you ARE in Aussie, aren't you, or have I got teh wrong end of the stick...?) I'd be interested in your opinions on that one! (It's VERY different, again...)
ma'am i found your book to be extremely beautiful... it still is one of the most magical pieces of literature i've come across..
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